IT was the building from which Margaret Thatcher orchestrated her election triumphs. But last night it fell into the clutches of the Eurocrats.

And to rub salt into Tory wounds Foreign Secretary William Hague hosted the re-opening of 32 Smith Square as the British headquarters for UK representatives of the EU Commission and European Parliament.

Some within his own party had urged him to boycott the event. Former party chairman Lord Tebbit said: “It is a very sad day, to see what was once the home of a great democratic party fall into the hands of those who rule us undemocratically.”

And Eurosceptic Tory MP Bill Cash said: “I cannot think of any place less appropriate than the former Conservative headquarters, the praetorian guard of euro-realism, to be usurped physically by European institutions.”